Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Sidekicks can serve an important role for a sleuth. Though
Sam Spade started off with partner Miles Archer, it was clear his sidekick was
really Effie Perine, his faithful and not faint-of-heart secretary. A sidekick
does the legwork (and what legs!) and in some instances, can also be the source
of the sleuth’s finding an important clue (it’s the sleuth that has to really
solve the case, however, otherwise there’s no reason to spend three hundred
pages with him!)

A sidekick can also be the source of some much-needed comic
relief when the action gets dark and heavy. He’s a sounding board for the
detective to bounce ideas off of. He—or she—can be in jeopardy, the damsel in
distress, for the heroic detective to save.

Whatever the purpose the sidekick serves, he had better be
more than a cardboard cut-out or there can be no empathy for his thankless and
often tireless work.

A sidekick can be as cunning as Bunter for Lord Peter
Wimsey, or the conscience of the piece as Sancho Panza is to Don Quixote. Without
Dr. Watson to write it all down, we’d never know about all of Sherlock Holmes’
adventures. And Robin Hood would have no one to mourn him without Little John.

A knight’s sidekick could very well be his squire, but since
my hero Crispin Guest is no longer the knight he was, there can be no squire as
such. Only an orphaned street urchin would be fitting for a man who now had to
eke out a life on the mean streets of fourteenth century London. And so Jack
Tucker, orphan, cutpurse, thief and street urchin comes into Crispin’s life.
More comfortable on the streets and with the low-lifes he and Crispin
encounter, Jack is often a go-between. He may be young—eleven when we first meet
him in the debut of the series, VEIL OF LIES, and is now fifteen in the latest
Crispin Guest mystery SHADOW OF THE ALCHEMIST—but he’s whip-smart, and even gave
up the “habit” of cutting purses, the medieval equivalent of picking pockets
(no pockets yet).

Jack is growing up and coming into his own. He’s becoming
invaluable to Crispin and their relationship matures as they grow closer to one
another. In fact, Jack Tucker was never meant to be in the books more than
once, but my agent and editor liked him so much, he was made into more than a
walk-on. Which turned out to be serendipity. Jack is a reflection of what
Crispin was, innocent, sometimes naïve, adventurous, before life’s realities
crowded in around him. And I think that Crispin would also have been mired in
his own private hell if Jack hadn’t come along as a distraction. Now, Crispin
does, on occasion, wallow a bit in his own miseries, but he also knows he has a
responsibility as the only mentor and role model for his new charge. Knowing
now that he will never have an heir (and an heir to what?) he cultivates Jack
as he was raised, not only teaching him how to read and write, but languages
and the art of battle.

Jack often humanizes the plight of the poor and uneducated
to Crispin who has come from wealthy and intellectual origins, who had no
inkling of the lives of his servants on his erstwhile estates anymore than he
had a clue about the lives of the people he passed on the streets of London.

He also serves as the reader’s chorus, asking the questions
we might ask the sleuth ourselves; standing in for us when we haven’t got a
clue. He’s the one to whom the sleuth explains his failings, his thinking
process, the one to whom he says “Aha!” but doesn’t yet elucidate, leaving the
sidekick to race after him with, “Wait! What did you discover?”

And after six books in the series, Jack is certainly coming
into his own. We’ve seen him grow up, even mellowing his mentor and master,
Crispin Guest. But as Jack grows and his backstory comes to the fore, he’s
becoming less of a sidekick and more of a full-fledged partner. He does his own
sleuthing. After all, he knows those dark streets of London better than his
master. And soon, he will get his own young adult series of books, though they
will stray from mystery and delve into the depths of fantasy and paranormal in
the Jack Tucker Tales. He’ll test his mettle in ways he’s never faced before. It
will serve as a fine compliment to the Crispin series as I delve more into the
character and adventures of a young man, trying to find his way and his place
in a world that seldom has room for his like.

We need our literary sidekicks. And it’s even more wonderful
when we want to know more about them. What motivates them to play second fiddle
to the hero? What sort of rewards can they expect?

---

Crispin writes his own blog (yeah, everyone’s got a blog
these days) and he sometimes writes about Jack Tucker. Read it at www.jeriwesterson.com/crispins-blog.
For more on Jeri’s newest release, SHADOW OF THE ALCHEMIST, including a series
book trailer and book discussion guides, go to www.JeriWesterson.com.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Like
most of the authors who have posted about supporting characters here, I have
more than one I love, so I’ll jump right in. I write historical romance, and my
favorite supporting character is from my least successful book, Sass Meets Class. He appears in Arizona
Territory where my heroine’s family is starting a general store.

EXCERPT

An unfamiliar man
clumped across the creekbed carrying what may have once been a chair. He
stopped at the porch, the toes of his dirty work boots almost touching the
bottom step. His disfigurements set Susan back on her heels. He possessed only
one eye, the empty right socket sealed shut by scar tissue trailing down his
cheek and jaw much like wisteria flowers over a porch rail. He'd swathed the
stump where his right hand should have been in the sleeve of his blue and cream
striped cotton shirt. His legs appeared to be intact, sheathed in worn but
clean denim. "Morning, ma'am," he said cordially. The lips puckered
around a mouth missing so many teeth it made his speech slur. "My name's
Clive."

"An excellent
notion. You'll do well." He mounted the stairs carrying the rocker he
might have been sitting on when the dynamite blew. He brought the creaking pile
of sticks onto her sparkling porch then roosted like he owned the place.
"Every town needs a store, and every store needs an old coot on the porch."
He didn't even look at her as he said it, just peered around with his one eye
surveying the little town of Gateway as if it were his kingdom.

Susan blinked at
him. She'd given the store a good deal of thought on the long days of travel. A
coot never entered the picture, especially one who would just as likely scare
the customers away. Still, he filled the left side of an otherwise empty space
with a comfortable, small town feeling.

"Any chance
you'll get a new chair?" she asked resignedly.

"None whatsoever,"
Clive replied without even looking at her.

Clive
begins as a stereotypical small-town geezer, but little hints of his difficult
past crop up throughout the book. He becomes Susan’s watchdog, surrogate
parent, and champion, while continuing to provide occasional comic relief.

Some
of my other supporting characters have interested me enough to warrant their
own books. I am augmenting the three novels in my Evolution Series of
historical romances set in Charlemagne’s Empire with two shorter stories, both
featuring servants from the larger works. My next release, coming out in a few
weeks, will be a novella I’d originally visualized as a short story. Little Witch grew into 49,000 words
featuring a character who originated as the Lord of Ribeauville’s stableboy,
Nox, now all grown up and adeptly avoiding as many emotional bonds as possible.
In the first excerpt, we see him as a teenager in Vain, and in the next, as an adult.

EXCERPT
FROM Vain

Lily forced herself
out of the chair. With the lord gone, she could safely fetch some water at the
well near the rear wall of the house. With the only two chipped cups to be
found she approached the wood lined well. She cranked the windlass to lower the
leather bucket down to the water, then rewound the rope on the shaft. She
dipped a cup of the liquid and brought it to her dry lips, drinking thirstily.
The water was refreshingly cool, and she drank another full cup.

“Hey ho. I got a wood
bucket in the stable if you want to keep one,” a boy said from behind her. Lily
turned to see a lanky frame dressed in a tidy homespun tunic, all topped with a
riot of curling brown hair. Ribeauville was a small enough town that Lily
recognized him, though she did not know his name. “Gusta said you would be
livin’ in the shed.” His voice cracked unexpectedly, heralding his approaching
adulthood.

“I am Lily,” she
offered. “I would very much like to borrow a bucket, since I only have these
two cups.”

“No way to wash in
those,” he observed cheerfully. “My name is Nox because I was born at night.
Could have been worse. My little brother’s name is Diem. Guess why.”

Lily smiled, instantly liking the
forthrightness of the boy. “My mother named me Lily because I was born in the
spring when the snowflake lilies were blooming. My father brought me some every
year on my birthday….” Lily stopped. He hadn’t brought any this year. He hadn’t
even been here. How could his love for her disappear in the span of a
year?

If
Nox noticed her sudden silence he covered it well. “Lily is a good name. For a
girl.”

Here, in Little Witch, Nox meets Salena, a friend from the childhood home
where he lived before his family died and the Lord of Ribeauville took him in.
He has come to investigate a disagreement over land boundaries.

EXCERPT FROM Little Witch

“What work do you do
for him, other than checking on arguments about land?” Salena asked.

“He calls me his
‘reconnoiter.’ I do not think that is even a real word, at least not as a title
for someone. He finds it amusing, and Lady Lily shakes her head at me every
time he does it.” Nox smiled, obviously comfortable as he talked about the lord
and lady who had jurisdiction over a large region around their town.
“Theophilus must be away from home so much of the year — far away, on official
business — that someone else must do this sort of investigation. He dislikes
leaving, even for a day, to look into smaller issues like this. Not that he
does not think them important,” he hastened to add. “I gather information. His
clerk and I do our best to sort through things before setting the problems
before him.”

Salena thought the
work sounded fascinating. “That must be wonderful, to be able to travel all
over the countryside meeting new people every day.”

He shrugged, a little
embarrassed by her enthusiasm. “It sounds very lofty. I still help around his
house, too, with things like firewood and the garden and exercising his horse.
I wanted to come to the army with him in the summers, but he needs me here. He
feels more comfortable with a man nearby in case Lady Lily and the children
need help.”

“He must trust you
above anyone,” she said, impressed and a little jealous. No one outside her own
blood would ever ask her to watch over their family.

“I have never given
him reason not to,” he replied, unaware of the pinprick he gave her feelings.
“He has been good to me. I have often wondered why, out of all the orphans he
has encountered in his life, he picked me to muck out his stables. He claims
that another nobleman had stolen his former stableboy away the week before.
That seems like an incredible bit of luck to me,” he said earnestly.

Salena smiled at him
and gestured to their right, pointing out a path that would lead downhill
toward the river. They would not go all the way to the water, just to a fertile
square of flatland. “Lucky for certain, but probably not an easy change for
you.”

“In its way, it was
best.” He glanced over at her, as if weighing whether to say more. “Being
removed from here allowed me to hold onto a childish notion for a time.” He
paused again. “I used to imagine my family still lived here, that I had gone
away and they continued on. That was a great comfort to me in the early years,
pretending they were here, though I suppose I would be a very odd man if I’d
never outgrown the fantasy.”

“What did you do, the
first time your work brought you back here?”

The rawness flashed at
her again. “I saw the new owner — Burke I think is his name — out front with a
child. I walked right past, down the road, weeping like a baby,” he admitted.

Salena did not know what to say. She had
cried through more than a few steps of her own walks and hated the idea of her
old friend, now a fine young man, taking the same lonely journey.

In
the first excerpt, Nox talks about Diem as if he were still alive, but in this
one he admits that he used this pretense to cope with being in a strange place,
alone and grieving. This tidbit is partially revealed in Vain, and I think is the kind of backstory that makes supporting
characters interesting enough that readers want to see more, even if only in a
short story. It also gives the opportunity to show your fans what is going on
with your major characters.

As
I mentioned above, my next release will be the last piece of my Evolution
Series, Nox’s story told in Little Witch:
Historical Romance Novella. It has been a pleasure visiting here today!

Thursday, August 15, 2013

August 16 is the day dedicated to St. Roch, patron saint of
dogs. Celebrate dogs who help others by buying one our books, and we'll donate what we earn from August 16-18 to ECAD.

Notice the loaf of bread in the dog's mouth!

In his honor, Sharon Sakson and I are donating 100% of our royalties from
August 16-18 for three dog-related books to Educating Canines Assisting with
Disabilities, ECAD. We both love dogs, and know
how meaningful a dog can be to one’s life, and we’re happy to support a group
that puts service dogs together with those who need them.

Here are the three books:

Paws and Reflect, a book of essays Sharon and I edited together, about the relationships between gay men and their dogs

In churches and cathedrals of southern France, there is
often a statue of a saint who holds a staff in one hand while a friendly dog
leans against his side. This is St. Roch, patron saint of dog trainers.

His story is an interesting one. In 1350, he was the son of
the wealthy mayor of Montpellier and lived in aristocratic comfort until one
summer when Pope Urban V visited from Rome. Roch was transfixed by the pope’s
devotion to his faith and decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome.

God showed his
approval by giving him the gift of healing.

On his return journey, Roch entered village after village
where the plague was decimating people. At each village, he tended to the sick,
often curing them.

But in the village of Piacerna, Roch himself fell sick.

He didn’t want the villagers to see his suffering, as he
knew they would tend to him and thus reinfect themselves. So he disappeared
into a quiet spot in the woods to live out his days.

But a dog followed him to
his hiding place, and each day the dog appeared carrying a loaf of bread. Roch
ate the bread, which gave him sustenance to recover. When he was strong enough,
the dog led him back to the home of his master, where Roch found friendship and
the means to start over in his life as a healer.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Secondary characters
are what water is to flour. Seriously.
Remember Paddington the Bear? One day he is making pancakes and he adds too
much water. He has to add more flour. Adds too much flour. Has to add more
water. Pretty soon he has himself a helluva lot of batter. He finally finds
that balance between two equally important ingredients.

That normally may be my
take on primary and secondary characters, but today I have no balance. I
thought I was here to introduce you to one of my most memorable secondary characters,
Geoff Hayes, from my title CoverBoys
& Curses.

In his inimitable style, and flair for commanding center
stage, Geoff is screaming in to my ear. Or head. Or something like that. I’m
used to him. He won’t give up. It’s time I turn this entire post over to him.

Finally! My name is
Geoff. Kindly remember it is two syllables. Gee-off. My close friends often
give me a title I adore. Queen Geoff. Maybe at the end of this condensed
snapshot memoir, you’ll be my close friend. Hell. Just call me Queen Geoff, if
you like.

Lauren Visconti gave me
my dream job as IT Director for her travel magazine. Imagine my surprise when
she told me she had sold it, and wanted me to move to L.A. with her to launch
her new rag, CoverBoy. Imagine my bigger
surprise when she told me I would continue on as her IT guy, and also model for
the cover of her premiere issue.

This is something I could
not refuse.

Her formula is an
instant success. Something unheard of in magazines these days. Lauren ran
photos of almost naked men juxtaposed to in-your-face investigative reporting
articles. Toledo’s exploding sex-slave industry. The practice of
re-virgination. And of course, the almighty. Evidence of continuing child
sexual abuse within the Catholic church. Lauren names names.

I work hard and I party
hard. I’m handsome and athletic, smart and well-off financially, and I’m a tad flamboyant-flame and true to my game.
Oh, and I’m not modest. WYSIWYG.

I’m the one that has to
break the bad news to Lauren. I take her out to the Santa Monica Pier, and the famed
carousel. I sit her down on the chariot bench next to me, and we talk as the
horses fly through the air in tandem with the tin-sounding music.

An Afghanistan woman, a
rebel doctor we published a personality-profile on, had been murdered in our
city of angels. The murder is what they call overkill. It means it’s personal.

It’s only the
beginning.

While some may not take
my persona, inside and out, seriously, I will fight, defend, and protect my
loved ones like any other Superwoman.

CoverBoys
& Curses is available as an eBook and will be in
trade paperback August 16, 2013.